Patch Notes: October 18, 2016
General ;Hallow's End Arrives October 25! *50% XP Bonus! **The Nexus will be haunted by a 50% XP bonus from October 25 until Hallow’s End concludes during the week of November 8! *Hallow’s End Event Quest **Quest: Play 15 games during Hallow’s End in any mode except Custom Games, Training, or Heroes Brawl. **Reward: Deputy Valla Portrait Hew Hero: Samuro Samuro, the last remaining blademaster to wear the banner of the Burning Blade, is on a warrior’s pilgrimage in search of vengeance and redemption for this fallen clan. It will be a long journey, but he has sworn an oath to restore his clan’s honor. ;Trait *Advancing Strikes **Basic Attacks against enemy Heroes increase your Movement Speed by 25% for 2 seconds. ;Basic Abilities *Mirror Image (Q) **Create 2 Mirror Images that deal 30% of your damage and have 50% of your current Health. Images last up to 16 seconds, and only 2 can be active at once. *Critical Strike (W) **Your next Basic Attack within 8 seconds will be a Critical Strike, dealing 50% increased damage. This also applies to Mirror Images and does not break Wind Walk. **Passive: You and your Mirror Images deal a Critical Strike every 4th Basic Attack. *Wind Walk (E) **Enter Stealth for up to 8 seconds or until you attack, use an Ability, or take damage. While Stealthed, your Movement Speed is increased by 30% and you can pass through other units. **Damage taken during the first 1 second will not break Wind Walk. ;Heroic Abilities *Bladestorm ® **Become an unstoppable whirlwind, dealing moderate damage to nearby enemies every second for 4 seconds. *Illusion Master ® **Switch places with the target Mirror Image. **Passive: You can control Mirror Images separately or as a group, and they deal an additional 20% of your damage. New Game Mode: Heroes Brawl Heroes Brawl is an action-packed new game mode that breaks all the rules and offers a fresh take on Heroes of the Storm's gameplay each week. ;The Basics *Heroes Brawl offers three distinct match types, with endless possibilities for twisted rulesets and wild mechanics each week: **Arenas: Pick one of three randomly selected Heroes, and then duke it out against the enemy team to complete objectives. The first team to complete the objective twice will claim victory. **Mutators: Wild rulesets and unique mechanics change the way you play on Battlegrounds you’re already familiar with. **Single-Lanes: One-lane Battlegrounds with no objectives, Mercenaries, or Hearthstone to distract you from destroying the enemy Core. *Click the Brawl Info button in the lower-left corner of the screen to learn detailed information about the currently active Brawl. ;How to Brawl *Find Heroes Brawl in-game by heading to the Play screen, click Brawl on the navigation bar, then queue up and have a blast! *Anyone can dive into the action! Heroes Brawl is not restricted by account level or the number of Heroes owned, and you can queue up alone or in a party of any size. *The current weekly Brawl will also be available through Custom Games - though replays, observer mode, and score screens may not function as expected for some of the unique Brawl types. **Heroes Brawl custom games will also discard Hero drafts and pre-selections once players enter the match. ;Reap the Rewards *Participate in three Brawls each week to receive in-game rewards! *Hover the cursor over the Weekly Rewards icon in the lower-left corner of the Brawl screen for a breakdown of the available rewards each week. Art ;General *The following Heroes have received additional facial animation polish: **E.T.C. **Illidan **Valla *Diablo has received additional idle animation polish. ;Battlegrounds *Core attacks have received update visual effects in order to better visually indicate that they deal splash damage. *Cannonballs that fire on the minimap for Blackheart's Bay have received visual effects polish. *Sky Temple has received additional optimization polish. ;Heroes, Abilities, and Talents *The following Heroes have received custom Hearthstone animations: **Diablo **E.T.C. *The following Heroes, Abilities, and Talents have received updated visual effects: **Cleanse (Talent) **Gul’dan: Fel Flame (Q), Corruption (E) **Illidan: Evasion (E) **Lunar Illidan: The Hunt ® Shop ;Bundles *New Bundles **Hellblade Samuro Bundle – Available until November 1, 2016 **Hallow’s End 2016 Bundle – Available from October 25 until November 8, 2016 **Hallow’s End 2016 Ultimate Bundle – Available from October 25 until November 8, 2016 **The following Bundles will be added to the in-game Shop on October 18 and have no planned end-date: ***Nexus Challenger Bundle ***Nexus Conqueror Bundle *Removed Bundles **The following bundles will be removed from the in-game Shop on October 18: ***Starter Bundle ***Triumph Bundle ;New Hero *Samuro has been added to the in-game Shop. ;Mounts *New Mounts **Hellboar **Eye Pad – Available exclusively with purchase of either Hallow’s End 2016 bundle. This mount may return to the game as an individual item at a later date. *Returning Mounts **Marshal's Outrider *Removed Mounts **Crimson Hare ;Skins *Hellblade Samuro *Master Samuro *Scarecrow Xul – Available starting October 25 *Deputy Valla – Available starting October 25 ;Price Reductions *Greymane’s prices have been reduced to $8.49 USD and 7,000 Gold. *Rexxar’s prices have been reduced to $6.49 USD and 4,000 Gold. Sound ;Ranked *New voiceover lines have been added that will play when a player is promoted into a new League Tier. ;Draft Mode *Sound effects and voiceover will now play when entering Lost Cavern Draft Mode via Custom Games. User Interface ;General *A “New Player Chat” channel has been added. **New players will automatically join this channel upon logging into Heroes of the Storm until they reach account level 20. ;Daily Win Bonus *The first game that players win each day will now award 50% bonus XP and Gold for that match. **This bonus applies to all game modes except Brawl, Custom Games, and Training. **A First Win of the Day icon has been added to the top navigation bar, which will activate whenever a First Win of the Day bonus is available. ;In-Game UI *Hover the cursor over the VS icon found in the top-center of the screen to display the amount of XP earned by each team from various sources, including: Takedowns, Mercenaries, Structures, and more. ;XP Bonuses *Friend Bonus **Playing Heroes with a friend will now award 25% bonus XP. *Party Bonus **The XP bonus earned by playing in a party now scales based on the number of party members: ***2 Players: +25% ***3 Players: +33% ***4 Players: +42% ***5 Players: +50% *Game Mode Bonus **Playing ranked games will now award an XP bonus: ***Hero League: +25% XP ***Team League: +50% XP *XP Bonuses Stack Additively **Playing in a party with one friend will still award a total of 50% bonus XP, just as it did before, but playing with additional party members will now award even more XP. **Playing Team League in a full party with at least one friend and an active Stimpack will now award a total of 225% bonus XP. *The “Available XP Bonuses” icon in the top navigation bar will activate when players are receiving any of the bonuses mentioned above. **Hover the cursor over this icon to display a tooltip that offers a full breakdown of all active and inactive XP bonuses. ;Play Screen *Hovering the cursor over each game mode on the Play Screen navigation bar will now display a tooltip that briefly describes that mode. *Versus A.I. **Training mode has been moved into Versus AI on the Play screen. **A “Versus A.I. Options” interface has been added to the left side of the Versus A.I. screen. ***Use the buttons to switch between Training, A.I. Teammates, or Co-op modes. ***Use the Difficulty Slider to select the desired skill level of A.I. allies and opponents in A.I. Teammates and Co-op modes. ****Training mode A.I. difficulty is set to beginner, and cannot be changed. *Suggested Play Mode **The Play Screen navigation bar will now suggest a game mode to new players. ***Level 1 – 10: Versus A.I. ***Level 11 – 20: Quick Match ***Level 20+: Heroes Brawl (If the weekly rewards have not yet been earned.) **Hover the cursor over the suggested mode icon to display a tooltip that explains why a mode is suggested. ;Profile *Match History **The Match History tab can now be filtered by Heroes Brawl matches using the dropdown menu in the upper-right corner. **Each game in the Match History list will now display Hero names and portraits for each Hero selected during that game. *Profile Summary **Heroes Brawl stats have been added to the Profile Summary screen that will track the number of Brawls won and weekly rewards earned. *Statistics **The Statistics tab can now be filtered by Heroes Brawl stats using the dropdown menu in the upper-right corner. ;MVP and Commendations *MVP and Commendations can now be skipped using the new Exit button added to the lower-left corner of the screen. **The duration of the MVP and Commendations screen now lasts 50 seconds. **A timer has been added to the lower-right corner of the screen that will count down the final 10 seconds of the MVP and Commendations screen. *Commendations **Bulwark will now take the number of deaths into account in order to focus this Commendation on the efficiency of damage soaked, rather than total damage taken. ***The tooltip for Bulwark will now display the player’s total deaths during the match in addition to damage soaked. **Slight adjustments have been made in order to better balance the Dominator and Painbringer Commendations. **Abathur was previously a little too likely to receive the MVP award. Slight adjustments have been made to bring him in line with other Heroes. Bug Fixes ;General *Corrected a number of typos and tooltip errors across several aspects of the game. ;AI *Medivh: Enemy AI players will now avoid teammates that are under the effects of Medivh’s Polybomb. *Lt. Morales: Can now properly detonate Displacement Grenade near enemies. ;Art *Chen: Keg models that appear when casting Storm, Earth, Fire using any of Chen’s Skins are no longer missing certain visual effects. *Illidan: The visual effects for The Hunt will now properly display on the Ability’s target during replays. *Greymane: The Worgen model will no longer remain on screen while viewing end-of-game Stats and Talents pages. ;Battlegrounds *Braxis Holdout **Neutral Raven Mercenaries will no longer clip into the terrain after being knocked back. **Fixed an issue in which Zagara’s Mutalisk could cause a captured Archangel to exhibit pathing issues. **Fixed an issue in which a captured Archangel could target enemy Heroes with its Bullet Storm Ability. *Garden of Terror: Shielding a Structure will no longer prevent a Garden Terror's bonus siege damage from being applied. *Infernal Shrines: Fallen Shaman Mercenaries will now prioritize attacking enemy Structures over Walls. ;Heroes, Abilities, and Talents *Damage Reduction: When two damage reduction effects, such as Resistant (25%) and Hardened Shield (75%), are simultaneously applied to a Hero, the larger effect will no longer be overridden by the lesser effect. *Anub'arak: The Cocoon overlay will now display correctly for enemies affected by Cocoon. *Auriel **The Piercing Lash Talent tooltip now correctly states that Detainment Strike will only pierce Heroes, rather than all enemies. **Enemy Heroes will no longer occasionally be Stunned by Detainment Strike when knocked away from terrain. **Quest progress for the Repeated Offense Talent will now be correctly tracked in the Stats panel. *Azmodan: Globe of Annihilation’s range indicator is now visually consistent with indicators used by other long-range Abilities. *Greymane: The Go for the Throat indicator will no longer visually persist above Heroes who have post-death forms, such as Uther or Leoric, after they are killed. *Illidan: Fixed an issue that could occasionally cause Illidan to fly back to his death location if he was killed while using Dive. *Kharazim: Will no longer automatically resume attacking enemies after using Radiant Dash to dive to an ally. This fix also applies to Illidan’s Friend or Foe and Kerrigan’s Adaptation Talents. *Leoric: Minions will no longer path around Leoric when he is in Undying form. *Medivh: The damage over time effect from Xul’s Poison Nova will no longer be visually removed from Medivh’s Health bar after traveling through a Portal with the Mage Armor Talent. *Rexxar: A delay will no longer occur between repeated Misha, Focus! casts. *Sgt. Hammer: Re-casting Orbital BFG just as the first missile re-enters the Battleground will no longer cause the new missile to follow the previous path. *Sylvanas: The Death Recap tooltip for Wailing Arrow now correctly displays the Ability’s description. *The Butcher: Hamstring will now correctly deal bonus damage to non-Heroic targets after learning the Cheap Shot Talent. *Zagara: The Stasis overlay will no longer appear on the screen when Zagara’s Mutalisk enters Zeratul's Void Prison. ;Sound *Illidan **Voiceover that plays while casting The Hunt is now only audible for Illidan and his target. **High pitched ambient sounds that play while casting The Hunt are no longer audible for the target’s allies. Lower-pitched ambient sounds will still play for all players and observers. ;User Interface *Death Recap: Fixed an issue in which a Heal effect could occasionally appear to be the killing blow in Death Recap notifications. *Replay: Selecting a Hero during a Replay will no longer prevent the Hero Portrait and Status Bars from switching correctly when attempting to view a different Hero’s perspective using hotkeys. *Observer: Warhead counters will now update properly in the Observer interface on Warhead Junction. External links *Official patch notes blog Category:Patch notes